Josie’s cheeks turned pink. “Maybe I was a bit hasty,” she stammered.
“You threw your drink in my face.”
“It was an accident!” she protested.
He lifted an incredulous dark eyebrow. “You jumped up and ran out of the restaurant.”
“You just surprised me!” Three nights ago, on Christmas Eve, Kasimir had called her at the Hale Ka’nani Hotel, where she was working as a housekeeper. “My sister told me to never talk to you,” she’d blurted out when he introduced himself. “I’m hanging up.”
“Then you’ll miss the best offer of your life,” he’d replied silkily. He’d asked her to meet him at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant near Waikiki Beach. In spite of knowing he was forbidden—or perhaps because of it—she was intrigued by his mysterious proposal. And then she’d been even more shocked to find out he’d meant a real proposal. Marriage.
“You ran away from me,” Kasimir said quietly, taking a step towards her, “as if you were being chased by the devil himself.”
She swallowed.
“Because I did think you were the devil,” she whispered.
His blue eyes narrowed in disbelief. “This is your way of saying you’ll marry me?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand,” she choked out. “You...”
Her throat closed. How could she explain that even though he and his brother had ruined their lives ten years ago, she’d still been electrified by Kasimir’s bright blue eyes when he’d asked her to marry him? How to explain that, even though she knew it was only to get his hands on her land, she’d been overwhelmed by too many years of yearning for some man, any man, to notice her—and that she’d been tempted to blurt out Yes, betraying all her ideals about love and marriage?
How could she possibly explain such pathetic, naive stupidity? She couldn’t.
“Why did you change your mind?” he asked in a low voice. “Do you need the money?”
They did need to pay off the dangerous men who’d pursued them for ten years, demanding payment of their dead father’s long-ago debts. But Josie shook her head.
“Then is it the title of princess that you want?”
Josie threw him a startled glance. “Really?”
“Many women dream of it.”
“Not me.” She shook her head with a snort. “Besides, my sister told me your title’s worthless. You might be the grandson of a Russian prince, but it’s not like you actually own any land—”
Whoops. She cut off in midsentence at his glare.
“We once owned hundreds of thousands of acres in Russia,” he said coldly. “And we owned the homestead in Alaska for nearly a hundred years, since my great-grandmother fled Siberia. It is rightfully ours.”
“Sorry, but your brother sold your homestead to my father fair and square!”
He took a step towards her.
“Against my will,” he said softly. “Without my knowledge.”
Josie took an unwilling step back from the icy glitter in his blue eyes. A self-made billionaire, Kasimir Xendzov was known to be a ruthless, heartless playboy whose main interest, even more than dating supermodels or adding to his pile of money, was destroying his older brother, who had cheated him out of their business partnership right before it would have made him hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked suddenly.
“No,” she lied, “why would I be?”
“There are...rumors about me. That I am more than ruthless. That I am—” he tilted his head, his blue eyes bright “—half-insane, driven mad by my hunger for revenge.”
Her mouth went dry. “It’s not true.” She gulped, then said weakly, “Um, is it?”
He gave a low, threatening laugh. “If it were, I would hardly admit it.” He turned away, pacing a step before he looked back at her. “So you’ve changed your mind. But has it occurred to you,” he said softly, “that I might have changed my mind about marrying you?”
Josie looked up with an intake of breath. “You—wouldn’t!”
He shrugged. “Your rejection of me three days ago was definitive.”
Fear, real fear, rushed through Josie’s heart. She’d gambled her last money to come here. Without Kasimir’s help, Bree would be lost. She’d be Vladimir
Xendzov’s possession. His slave. Forever. Her shoulders felt tight as hot tears rushed behind her eyes. Desperately, she grabbed his arm.
“No—please! You said you’d do anything to get the land back. You said you made a promise to your dying father. You—” She frowned, suddenly distracted by the hard muscle of his biceps. “Jeez, how much weight lifting do you do?”
He looked at her. Blushing, she dropped his arm. She took a deep breath.
“Just tell me. Do you still want to marry me?”
Kasimir’s handsome face was impassive. “I need to understand your reason. If it’s not to be a princess...”
She gave a choked laugh. “As if I’d marry someone for a worthless title!”
His dark eyebrow lifted. “For your information, my title isn’t worthless. It’s an asset. You’d be surprised how many people are impressed by it.”
“You mean you use it as a shameless marketing tool for your business interests.”
His lips curved with amusement. “So you do understand.”
“I hope you’re not expecting me to bow.”
“I don’t want you to bow.” He looked up, his blue eyes intent. “I just want you to marry me. Right now. Today.”
Staring at his gorgeous face, Josie’s heart stopped. “So you do still want to marry me?”
He gave her a slow-rising smile that made his eyes crinkle. “Of course I want to marry you. It’s all I’ve wanted.”
He was looking down at her...as if he cared.
Of course he cares, she told herself savagely. He cares about getting his family’s land back. That’s it.
But when he looked at her like that, it was too easy to forget that. Her heart pounded. She felt...desired.
Josie tried to convince herself she didn’t feel it. She didn’t feel a strange tangle of tension and breathless need. She didn’t.
Kasimir reached out a hand to touch her cheek. “But tell me what changed your mind.”
The warm sensuality of his fingers against her skin made her tremble. No man had touched her so intimately. His fingertips were calloused—clearly he was accustomed to hard work—but they were tapered, sensitive fingers of a poet.
But Prince Kasimir Xendzov was no poet. Trembling, she looked down at his strong wrist, at his tanned, thick forearm laced with dark hair. He was a fighter. A warrior. He could crush her with one hand.
“Josie.”
“My sister,” she whispered, then stopped, her throat dry.
“Bree changed your mind?” Dropping his hand, he walked around her. “I find that hard to believe.”
She took a deep breath.
“Your brother kidnapped her,” she choked out. “I want you to save her.”
She waited for him to express shock, elation, rage, something. But his expression didn’t change.
“You...” He frowned, narrowing his eyes. “Wait. Vladimir kidnapped her?”
She bit her lip, then her shoulders slumped. “Well, I guess technically,” she said in a small voice, “you could say she wagered herself to him in a card game. And lost.”
His lip curled. “It was a lovers’ game. No woman would wager herself otherwise.” His eyes narrowed. “My brother always had a weakness for her. After ten years apart, they’re no doubt deliriously happy they’ve made up their quarrel.”
“Are you crazy?” she cried. “Bree hates him!”
“What!”
Josie shook her head. “He forced her to go with him.”
His handsome face suddenly looked cheerful. “I see.”
“And it’s all my fault.” A lump rose in her throat, and she covered her eyes. “The night after you proposed, my boss invited me to join a private poker game. I hoped I could win enough to pay off my father’s old debts, and I snuck out while Bree was sleeping.” She swallowed. “She never would have let me go. She forbade me ever to gamble, plus she didn’t trust Mr. Hudson.”
“Why?”
“I think it was mostly the way he hired us from Seattle, sight unseen, with one-way plane tickets to Hawaii. At the time, we were both too desperate to care, but...” She sighed. “She was right. There was something kind of...weird about it. But I didn’t listen.” She lifted her tearful gaze to his. “Bree lost everything on the turn of a single card. Because of me.”